Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

Forward, then.

I did not change my clothes nor leave my things at the gate; there is no fear of bringing microorganisms with me that could damage what is already, functionally, administratively dead. From my bag I take out blue paint that I had made in one of our autofab units. Holding it now against the blue in Tski’s leaf, I see mine is darker, not the right shade at all. But it will be close enough! Blue is blue. I use my fingers and I rub it on Ceye’s tree, press it into the scratches Tski left with my fingertips, until, breathing heavily from the exertion, I stand back again to admire my own accomplishment.

It is a mess, an inarticulate, artless smear.

I take several deep breaths, and then I go back in and I try again, using my fingernails instead of fingertips, trying to work with the flow of the lines, trying to find how it is supposed to go. I chip my nails, and several bleed before I give up, recap my jar of paint, and stand back to see that I have just made it worse.

I do not understand how I— I! —could fail at this frivolous thing that some dead animal moldering in the grass up the hill could comprehend and encompass. I had thought, in my arrogance, in my superior thinking, that after my practice on Ceye’s tree I would for my last act here paint Tski’s tree, and no one would ever know it was me. And thus I would be preserved, and every one of my people who looked here for generations would remember me , even if they did not know they did so. Then I would not just be one undifferentiated tooth on a cog gear, turning forward, resisting backward with all the others, but a fixed point.

I feel in that instant that all I have accomplished is to immortalize my own foolishness, to forever diminish everything I have ever reliably and competently accomplished under a shadow of mockery. Furious—at myself, at Tski for forcing my hand, at this entire planet—I throw down my jar of paint. I had sealed it, but it hits one of the rocks just right (just wrong!) and shatters, and paint droplets fly everywhere—not just onto the disaster I’ve made of Ceye’s tree, but onto others nearby.

“No!” I cry out loud, and I sink to my knees in the dying grasses and am consumed by my own rage and horror.

Joesla stands, trying not to shift impatiently from foot to foot, waiting for the rest of the council to arrive. She is early, but not by much. Banad was already here, clutching his report pad to his chest as if to protect his ambitions from her judging eyes. She has prepared her own argument to back up Avel’s, in case he does not make a compelling enough case on his own against Banad. So much has been lost already, she thinks, but if I can save the tiny fraction left, I will.

One by one others arrive, but other than the sounds of their movement, the chamber remains silent. It is a recognition, she likes to think, of the weighty day ahead of them.

Right at the hour bell the doors slide open again, and Motas comes in, moving more quickly than his usual ponderous and insufferably formal gait, and there is something in his expression she has never seen before. As she tries to untangle and define what is new there, she is distracted by something else: his hands are, inexplicably, stained blue.

“Motas—” she begins to ask, and he visibly flinches at the sound of his own name.

Behind him, Tauso, last of the council to arrive, runs into the chamber. He is heaving for breath, his face red with sweat and something more, something the opposite of Motas’s.

“The Ofti grove!” he shouts. “It’s on fire! Arson! The whole forest has gone up!”

Everyone turns just as the council chime sounds, and the acrid smell of smoke drifts in through the doors behind Tauso, a ghost with the swagger of an uninvited guest and accusations of murder on its breath, and it settles itself around a shivering Motas like a linen shroud.

Karin Tidbeck (karintidbeck.com) lives in Malmö, Sweden, and writes short stories, novels, and interactive fiction in Swedish and English. She debuted in 2010 with the Swedish short story collection Vem är Arvid Pekon? Her English debut, the 2012 collection Jagannath , won the Crawford Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award as well as honor-listed for the Otherwise Award. Her novel Amatka was shortlisted for the Locus Award and Prix Utopiales 2018. A new novel, The Memory Theater , is forthcoming.

Something had broken in a passenger room. Saga made her way through the narrow corridors and down the stairs as fast as she could, but Aavit the steward still looked annoyed when she arrived.

“You’re here,” it said, and clattered its beak. “Finally.”

“I came as fast as I could,” Saga said.

“Too slow,” Aavit replied and turned on its spurred heel.

Saga followed the steward through the lounge, where a handful of passengers were killing time with board games, books and pool. They were mostly humans today. Skidbladnir had no windows, but the walls on the passenger levels were painted with elaborate vistas. There was a pine forest where copper spheres hung like fruit from the trees; there was a cliff by a raging ocean, and a desert where the sun beat down on the sand. Saga enjoyed the view whenever she was called downstairs to take care of something. The upper reaches had no such decorations.

The problem Saga had been called down to fix was in one of the smaller rooms. A maintenance panel next to the bed had opened, and a tangle of wires spilled out. The electricity in the cabin was out.

“Who did this?” Saga said.

“Probably the passenger,” Aavit replied. “Just fix it.”

When the steward had gone, Saga took a look around. Whoever stayed in the room was otherwise meticulous; almost all personal belongings were out of sight. Saga peeked into one of the lockers and saw a stack of neatly folded clothing with a hat on top. A small wooden box contained what looked like cheap souvenirs—key rings, a snow globe, a marble on a chain. The open maintenance hatch was very out of character.

Saga shined a flashlight into the mess behind the hatch. Beyond the wires lay something like a thick pipe. It had pushed a wire out of its socket. Saga checked that no wires were actually broken, then stuck a finger inside and touched the pipe. It was warm, and dimpled under her finger. Skidbladnir ’s slow pulse ran through it. Saga sat back on her heels. Parts of Skidbladnir shouldn’t be here, not this far down. She reattached the wiring, stuffed it back inside and sealed the hatch with tape. She couldn’t think of much else to do. A lot of the work here consisted of propping things up or taping them shut.

The departure alarm sounded; it was time to buckle in. Saga went back upstairs to her cabin in maintenance. The air up here was damp and warm. Despite the heat, sometimes thick clouds came out when Saga exhaled. It was one of the peculiarities of Skidbladnir , something to do with the outside, what they were passing through, when the ship swam between worlds.

The building’s lower floors were reserved for passengers and cargo; Skidbladnir ’s body took up the rest. Saga’s quarters were right above the passenger levels, where she could quickly move to fix whatever had broken in someone’s room. And a lot of things broke. Skidbladnir was an old ship. The electricity didn’t quite work everywhere, and the plumbing malfunctioned all the time. The cistern in the basement refilled itself at irregular intervals and occasionally flooded the cargo deck. Sometimes the ship refused to eat the refuse, and let it rot in its chute, so that Saga had to clean it out and dump it at the next landfall. Whenever there wasn’t something to fix, Saga spent her time in her quarters.